Into the West
by EternalRandomChick
Summary: Song-fic to Annie Lennox's "Into the West" from the final "Lord of the Rings" movie. The last Doctor passes into the ether realm, the afterlife, and is reunited with the one that he always considered his angel. This fic completely ignores Rose's return in season 4, but the rest of the show does happen.


_A/N: Okay, so I started writing this before I started writing my other reunion fic, so the starting tone of this is a little bit darker__. There is a happy ending to this, but I just wanted to give you guys a warning. And, obviously from the title, you might want to listen to "Into the West"_ _from _Return of the King_, but it's not required._

**_UPDATE 3/8: I was warned to take the song lyrics out, due to copyright issues, by a fellow author on this site. I am sorry, but I do not want my story to be removed, so I had to take the lyrics out. I still ecourage you to please listen to the song while reading, even though the lyrics are no longer included in the story. I am sorry, however, I cannot violate the copyright, due to the risk of having this story taken down and/or my account terminated._**

* * *

Into the West

The thirteenth Doctor ran a tired hand over his face and through his hair. He had endured for an entire millennium, and even for Time Lords, that was quite a feat. He and his TARDIS had seen, and been the only survivors of, the destruction of Gallifrey and the infamous Time War; he had seen the beginning and destruction of countless civilizations and species. He had travelled across the stars, and had seen things beyond the wildest imaginations of anyone on Planet Earth.

Now, though, time had run out on the last Time Lord. He only had twelve regenerations, like a clock had twelve numbers, and his last incarnation was coming to an end. Now, he was about to make his last sojourn.

The TARDIS hummed in his mind. _"Well, Doctor,_" she asked, _"Where are we going to make our final resting place?"_

He had to think about that for a while. He had had so many companions during his millennium of life, and each of them was special to him in their own way. Sarah Jane had been absolutely brilliant in her ability to make discernments and investigations on evil alien plots. River had been a balm in a sense and she had helped heal him, but there were certain wounds even time itself could never heal.

His thoughts turned to a certain blonde girl, his angel. His beautiful, perfect Rose. Even River, with all her understanding and compassion, had not been able to help him get over the loss of Rose. Losing her was one of the unhealing wounds immune to the effects of time. She had eased the wound of the destruction of Gallifrey, taught him what it meant to live again. When she had been sealed away, he had been devastated, but when the breach had closed before he could even tell her he loved her, he felt that he would truly die.

"Woman Wept." He answered the TARDIS, naming the planet where he had spent a large amount of time after saying goodbye to the one he saw as his angel.

The TARDIS hummed again, this time in agreement and he set the co-ordinates for the ice planet.

A small jolt, barely perceptible, announced that they had arrived on Woman Wept. The TARDIS gave one last hum before her lights dimmed and eventually went out completely. The last TARDIS in the universe was dead. The Doctor was left in absolute darkness, the same kind that he felt he had lived in ever since Rose had been sealed away.

The Doctor knew the TARDIS like the back of his hand, and he knew exactly the way she had left things before she had died. He made his way to an old, nearly forgotten bedroom at the very back of the TARDIS and opened the door. The old scent of roses filled his nostrils and he smiled bitterly in remembrance. Everything was exactly the same way that she left it, from the drawers hanging slightly open to the way the covers on the bed were pushed halfway back when she had woken on that fatal morning.

With more than a few tears in his eyes, the last of the Time Lords allowed himself to curl up on Rose's bed. After a few moments, he closed his eyes and drifted away to the ether realm.

* * *

The ether realm was nothing like what the Doctor expected it would be. In all honesty, he had expected it would just be a black expanse of nothing going on forever; instead, the ether realm appeared as a summer meadow with flowers in full bloom. Occasionally, angels were seen gently gliding across the sky. A movement to his right caught his eye, and he turned his head.

A few feet away from him, there was another angel. But unlike the others, this one walked. Her wings were a dull grey; they drooped like all the sadness in the world rested upon her shoulders, and the glow around her almost didn't exist. Her blond hair hung all around her head as she buried her face in her hands; and the Doctor could tell that she was weeping. But the Doctor could tell that this weeping angel was entirely benevolent, unlike the creatures he had occasionally met during his travels.

Nearly immediately after the Doctor had laid eyes on her, the angel raised her head and screamed her misery to the skies. As she did, the Doctor got a good glimpse of the profile of her face, and he gasped. His hearts insisted that it was impossible, yet his mind, which had every detail of her face from every angle committed to perfect memory, told him that this was really happening. The angel who was in so much agony was -

"Rose..." he breathed.

The angel whipped her head in his direction, revealing that she, indeed, was Rose. Her pained eyes redefined misery, and even though she didn't look like she had physically aged a day since they said goodbye, the weight of her sadness made her look like one of the oldest creatures in the universe, including the Doctor and the Face of Boe. Yet, when she saw him, years seemed to melt away from her and the burden of misery was lifted off of her shoulders. A spark ran through her wings, causing them to perk up and the colour to lighten, and the glow around her became more obvious.

"Doctor." She murmured, recognizing him immediately, for he had reverted back to the form he had had when they had last seen each other, on that cursed beach in Norway. And she began to run to him, at times stumbling over her own feet like she was one the last vestiges of her strength, and sometimes using her newly restored wings to try to close some of the distance faster. After a second which could also have been an eternity, Rose finally landed in the Doctor's embrace, and as she flung her arms around his shoulders and his arms locked around her waist, a golden light exploded from their bodies. Finally, after so long, both of them felt complete once again.

The Doctor relished in feeling Rose's hair against his cheek once again, and Rose buried her face in the crook of his neck, inhaling his familiar scent. When they pulled back, still keeping their arms around each other, the Doctor noticed the tears still clinging to the corners of Rose's eyes. Leaning down, he gently kissed her tears away before pressing a long, yet chaste, kiss to her lips, trying to convey everything that he felt towards her; everything that he couldn't say before the breach had sealed.

When he released her lips, both of them were silent for a moment, taking in the other's familiar, welcome face.

"Oh, Rose," the Doctor breathed. He smiled at her, marveling at her now truly angelic appearance, especially since nearly all traces of misery had disappeared from her eyes. "Look at you." He tentatively ran his hand over the now snow-white feathers of her wings. He wasn't going to say it right now, maybe he would voice it later, but he much preferred white as the colour for her wings, rather than the dull grey that they had been when he had first seen her, mostly because white was a much better colour for a rose than grey.

Rose's glow flared up as she smiled. "You have wings, too," she informed him, laughing slightly at the astonished look that appeared on his face. Her arms were still placed around his neck, and she allowed one of her hands to drift down and she used it to gently coax one of his golden wings, the same colour as his regeneration energy, around to where he could properly see. "My Lonely Angel finally gets his wings."

* * *

After a minute which could also have been a thousand years, since time meant nothing in the ether realm, the two angels found themselves lying on the grass with their wings stretched out beneath them, staring up at the bright blue sky. The Doctor had asked her how long she had been in the ether, and Rose reluctantly revealed that she had died only three months after they had said goodbye. "I tried to hold on to life, I really did!" Rose defended herself at his horrified look. "I kept telling myself that you wouldn't want me to just throw away my life, and that Mum needed me and also the baby would need his or her big sister, but one night, I went to bed, with the full intention of waking up the next morning, but instead, I woke up here."

After another period of silence, the Doctor heard Rose groan softly. "What's wrong?" he asked her.

"'M just tired, that's all." She confessed. "Until I finally saw you... well, you probably remember. It felt like the sadness of the entire world, and all parallel worlds, was weighed on my shoulders. It's not a burden that can easily be forgotten."

He rolled over so that he was lying on his side and smiled at her. "I think you need a Doctor."

And he kissed her lips. She smiled into the kiss, remembering those words from when his leather-jacketed self had said those words when he saved her from the burning Time Vortex. This one now was a short kiss, but she felt instantly better. She snuggled up against his chest and felt his arms hold her close, being ever mindful of her wings. Her eyelids began to droop, but she didn't want to sleep, not just yet, not so soon after being reunited with her Doctor.

But he kissed her forehead and whispered in her ear, "Sleep, my Rose. I'll still be here when you wake up. I'm never letting you go again." She could never resist his voice, and nearly immediately, her eyes drifted shut, her wings folded themselves closer to her body, and another soft smile appeared on her face as she fell into a peaceful sleep. Before falling completely asleep, he heard her whisper, "I can finally give you that forever I promised you."

The Doctor dimmed his glow to make sure that it wouldn't disturb her, and he wondered what had he ever done in life to deserve to spend the rest of eternity with the angel sleeping in his arms. But when he took one look at her smiling face, he realized that he didn't care about what he had done to deserve her. All that really mattered was that they were together. He gently wrapped his golden wings around both of them and pulled Rose slightly closer to him. He himself could feel sleep calling him to its shores, but before he closed his eyes, he decided it was time for him to finish the sentence that he started on Bad Wolf Bay a hundred years ago. So he kissed Rose's hair and whispered in her ear, "Rose Tyler, I love you."


End file.
